There are no pictures from my garden this time as I am engaged in pruning all the shrubs. They have been allowed to grow naturally, which means that they have just grown upwards without any regard to a rounding out of their character and have become vegetative in character without flowers. Butterflies are here but scarce, as there are few flowers to settle on - hence the illustrations, to make up on the page what is lacking in the wild!
Then I began to think about the history of the butterfly with its life cycle from the larval caterpillar stage, an inactive pupal stage, and a spectacular metamorphosis into a familiar and colourful winged adult form. Perhaps this is what we are engaged in as Christians - a process of transformation. For Jesus this was the complete transformation out of death as the pioneer of the new creation made by God. For us it is this life-changing relationship with the risen Lord, a metamorphosis which has several cycles leading ultimately to a transformed life.

This is what Paul writes about in his letter to the Philippian church

Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own: but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Philippians is relatively free from the controversies Paul had to deal with in other places. He is able to communicate his commitment to Christ in terms which resonate with everyone, even today. It is full of hope. But now, after almost two millennia, we have different problems from those faced by the first century church. And they are mostly concerned with the translation of that same faith that Paul had in Jesus into terms that we can make our own. The layers of interpretation that the centuries have imposed upon the gospels, for instance, have obscured the figure of Jesus. For example the imposition of theories about why Jesus died, of what happens in the Christian Eucharist, even the possibility that the scriptural writings have become a literal resource in place of the person of Jesus. There is no escape from the task of peeling away these layers which were the cause of the controversies that have engulfed the church since at least the eleventh century. It's a great task! And we are all involved. In many ways what is facing us is the need for each one of us to come out of the inactive pupal stage and, with the realism of Paul, look ahead to the fulfilment of our life in Christ which has meaning in terms which we and others can understand in today's world.

The caterpillar, by an unthinking and unconscious mechanism, puts behind itself its inglorious past and launches out into the future of unfettered movement in its need to live a new life of glory. For us humans there is the need, by conscious, intelligent response, to anticipate a more glorious and realistic future both for the church and for ourselves as disciples of the risen Lord, here and now - 'Today, if you hear his voice ...'!